Child poverty rates sobering

9/21/07
Just in case anyone was getting too excited about Bridgeport’s future, a sobering report about the city’s present put a damper on some of the positive feelings.
In a week when the last touches of the Steel Point plan were finally put together and the developer of a huge luxury complex adjacent to Seaside Park went before the Planning and Zoning Commission, a report from the U.S. Census Bureau showed that child poverty in most of Connecticut’s big cities — Bridgeport included — has risen in the past six years.
Bridgeport’s rate rose to 29.5 percent in 2006 from 25.1 percent six years earlier. Other state cities were even more dire: In Waterbury, 33.5 percent of children live in poverty, while in Hartford the percentage is a staggering 43.4. Only New Haven, among the state’s largest cities, saw a percentage decline in that category.
It’s yet another reminder, if one were needed, that Bridgeport is a city with serious, deep-seated problems. That nearly one in three city children lives below federal poverty standards, which many experts say don’t come close to measuring the real numbers of people in need, ought to be a scandal.
Advocates for the poor say the increase in city poverty rates is because the state’s low-wage workers have not shared in the state’s economic growth. There’s little argument there. Top incomes are soaring, and lower incomes are bottoming out.
Connecticut Voices for Children, an advocacy group for children and families, is urging state lawmakers to implement a state earned-income tax credit, increase job training for low-wage families and invest in higher education to combat child poverty. They’re all worthy ideas, and deserve consideration from the state Assembly.
This is an issue around which the Bridgeport delegation, and other city lawmakers, should coalesce. The people of Connecticut’s cities are in need, and it will take more than high-end development on the waterfront to help them. Some people can’t wait for the rising tide to lift them.